I Met The Walrus - An Amazing Oscar Nominated Short

by Robert Wilkinson

Thanks to the great news source TruthOut, we find a unique, charming, and profound snapshot of an interview from a frozen moment in 1969 when a teen with a reel to reel tape recorder went face to face with John Lennon in a hotel room during the "Live Peace" era in Toronto. This 5 minute short is a true work of art. If you're interested in spending a somewhat fascinating 300 seconds, read on.

A little backdrop to the interview. John Lennon was arguably the most famous musician in the world, but he couldn't enter the US as he had been deemed a political threat by J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon for his open anti-war statements. This short, nominated for an Oscar in 2008, takes some of the dialog of the interview and sets it to a fluid series of morphing illustrations by James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina, offering a somewhat surreal visual. From the TruthOut story, "Raskin later told the EyeOpener.com, 'I just wanted to literally animate the words, unfurling in the way I imagined they would appear inside the head of a baffled 14-year-old boy interviewing his idol.'"